Why is a government administration concerned that providing public housing might encourage arson? Why do elderly choose to move away from their children so as to not receive their support? In this book, contributors explore case studies of social support from South Africa, Portugal, Greece, Russia, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and China. Conceptualizing support as encounters between state institutions and citizens, between aid workers and their clients, and between family members, the essays draw attention to the ways in which the nature and possible consequences of support are variably understood and negotiated. For the first time Ethnographies of Social Support draws attention to the non-purposive background presence of support that comes with living in a shared world.

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Markus Schlecker is Associate Member of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany. He has published articles in the journals History of the Human Sciences, Anthropological Theory, Social Analysis, History and Anthropology, and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is currently completing a book project on the significance of burials and bones in late socialist Vietnam.

Friederike Fleischer is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. She is author of Suburban Beijing: Housing and Consumption in Contemporary China (2010) and various articles in such journals as Religion, State, and Society, Ethnos, and Revista de Estudios Sociales. Her work focuses on the urban environment and the everyday lives of urban residents; social support and civil society; and relations between China and Colombia.

Introduction; Markus Schlecker1. Housing Support for the "Undeserving": Moral Hazard, Fires, and Laissez-faire in Hong Kong; Alan Smart2. "Who Will Love You if They Have to Look after You?": Sakhalin Koreans Caring from a Distance; Dorota Szawarska3. Access to the Social: The Ethics and Pragmatics of HIV/AIDS Support Groups in South Africa; Marian Burchardt4. The Changing Scale of Imprisonment and the Transformation of Care: The Erosion of the "Welfare Society" by the "Penal State" in Contemporary Portugal; Manuela Ivone P. da Cunha5. The Compassion of Strangers: Intimate Encounters with Assistance in Moscow; Melissa L. Caldwell6. Young Chinese Volunteers: Self/Interest, Altruism, and Moral Models; Friederike Fleischer7. Engagements and Interruptions: Mapping Emotion at an Athenian Asylum Advocacy NGO; Heath Cabot8. Life, Labor, and Merit: War Martyrdom as Support Encounters in Late Socialist Vietnam; Markus Schlecker9. Empathy, Salvation, and Religious Identity: Hindu Religious Movements and Humanitarian Action in India; Frédérique Pagani

10. Epilogue; Bartholomew Dean

Marian Burchardt, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, GermanyHeath Cabot, College of the Atlantic, USAMelissa L. Caldwell, University of California, Santa Cruz, USAManuela Ivone P. da Cunha, University of Minho, PortugalBartholomew Dean, University of Kansas, USAFrédérique Pagani, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles, FranceAlan Smart, University of Calgary, CanadaDorota Szawarska, University of Warsaw, Poland